Yeah

you've seen that movie,

                Denim jacket, jean, muscular wrench cord boy

picks up    Pink, tank, top too shy for eye shadow girl his

pick- up    purrs with the pace of the river his

                exhaust fumes foam with the trail of an airplane,

above                    cul-de-sac jobs and wife boxing slobs

above                    the height and width of letter box screens.

But

                The scenes that the drive-in didn't show us

                bore the woe of those who stayed behind, to

                watch dawn hatch from the slain yoke sky, with

                eyes as faint and dry as flaking feces and

                their faces fell again as the uncensored darkness

                grieved on the pines as the light left their minds.

 

My           girl used to sit in the window like a lamp.

As I         watched encamped in the damp Dixie forest

As I         watched more weeds cake the brier high May

until it      grew thick as the strands in her hairbrush

until         distant Arabians whinnied her name.

A sound

               reduced to engines as centuries ended, and

               her house was as empty as a spent box of matches

               as matching editions hit her porch early day

A             paper which suddenly had the same date

               from this fate on

 

                                             The Pain

 

               scratches like leaves across the soaked confetti

It             litters the ground with unsound prayers

It             plays dot to dot with rotted out memories

It             leaves a flawed spot on a white dress of dreams

'till           a thunderstorm swarms a melancholy tornado

and         whips at the scald noon sewer like an enema

until         the moon blooms, vacuumed in the hot, to

               set in the jet sky like a rock in a sauna,   to

               bath the auld autos, those stalled bumper cars

               still anticipating the carnival excitement of lightening

               will lend them some form of condensed, controlled fire

Did

               I ever tell you how much I admired you

On           any senseless night by the R.C. machine

               where your hair had the wings of a Caribbean penny

               as enticing and wet as the love in your mouth

When      you headed South in your tea colored top, that

blouse     with the spouse shoes, crushed used bottle tops

into         the asphalt, each one, my heart thrown

into         the glint of the Best Western Sun

               Setting alone.

 

 

Poet’s Bio: Tom Hamilton is an Irish Traveler. He currently lives with the clan known as the Mississippi Travelers. His work has appeared in over seventy publications including 'Bathtub Gin' 'The Rockford Review' and the 'Old Crow Review' among many others. Along with his wife Mary Theresa and their two small daughters, Tiffany and Hope Ann, he lives in Memphis TN.

    

 

 

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by Tom Hamilton
     
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